Germany’s BMZ Group and South Korea’s Samsung SDI have entered a long-term cooperation agreement to jointly promote the expansion of electromobile applications in the European market.
Karlstein-based BMZ said Samsung SDI, “one of the world’s largest cell manufacturers, will rely in the future on BMZ as system supplier for battery systems, integration and software”.
To secure this agreement, BMZ said it had placed an order with Samsung SDI for battery cells to the value of “just under US$1 billion” over the next five years.
BMZ anticipates that demand from its large automotive customers will double in the coming year, in order to produce electricity utility vehicles, passenger cars, and buses.
With that in mind, last year BMZ secured a long-term supply deal with South Korea’s LG Chem, totalling “over a few hundred million cells” by the end of 2022.
In December 2018, it was announced that Samsung would invest US$2.4bn to expand its battery manufacturing capacity in Tianjin, Northern China.
